Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
Thomas Jefferson

Friday, April 03, 2009

Blah, Blah, Blah...

On Saturday I flew up to Connecticut. Usually the experience of flying is a blog-worthy event, but this trip was remarkably unremarkable. Southwest Airlines are a class act, and check in was a breeze. Security didn't find me noteworthy, and while the flights were a bit bumpy, they were nothing horrible. Even the fact that they don't have reserved seating was not the ordeal I expected. They line everyone up according to the letter and number on your boarding pass, then you just go aboard and pick your seat. It was completely civilized and pleasant. In other words...boring.

The time spent in CT was, given the reason for the journey, quite nice. I stayed with my cousin Patty, who is my female counterpart in my uncle's family. She has a nice house, with a couple of very friendly(if somewhat neurotic) dogs. She also lives within minutes of my grandfather, so I got to spend a good bit of time with him. My brother also came up for the funeral, and Gramp told us many times how much it meant to him that we were there. The funeral itself was, um, lovely I guess you'd say. There was the traditional viewing, and the morticians did a good job making Gram look good. I'm not a fan of such things, but I guess some people need to actually see the deceased to accept the reality. Personally I could get by just fine without that, but what can you do? Many of Gram's family, most of whom I had not seen in a couple of decades, turned out for the Monday morning service, which seemed to please Gramp. My brother and I were honored to be pall bearers, which mainly consisted of putting the casket in the hearse, and taking it out again at the cemetary, but it was still good to have an active role. After the service we all adjourned to my younger cousin Pam's house were there was much food and pleasant visitation. One of the more surreal moments of the day happened shortly after a lot of us older 'kids' finished looking at pics from family gatherings past. We had just put away the photos of us as children when the eight or nine actual children gathered for a similar picture. Being as I live so far from my family, such meta-events are rare for me. Many email addresses were exchanged, and I now even have some of the family on my Facebook. And we all agreed that we should try to get together more often, next time sans tragedy.

The trip home was even less eventful. I landed in Tampa at 1:30, and was at work by 4:00. The show went smoothly in my absence, and everything is more or less back to normal.

I'd like to share something cool with you all. Allison, who is the first lady of Simply Syndicated, and who has never met any of us in person, created the Starbase 66 crew in The Sims. I think she did a great job, don't you?

And speaking of the starbase, episode 12 in which we discuss Watchmen and the Battlestar Galactica finale is now on line here.

The gatherings after funerals are usually quite nice. It's a terrible reason to get everyone together, but by the same token everyone seems to appreciate it a little more. It's good that you could all make things a little easier for your grandfather.